The Heroes That Took Back The Night
by nikki.ntm
Summary: The Christmas Tree Star needs to go and Isa knows exactly how to make it happen.


**Warnings: **Unbeta'd

* * *

**The Heroes That Took Back The Night**

It was common knowledge that Lea was the root of evil in the duo he formed with Isa. Every mischief they were caught for had brewed in in Lea's devilish mind and the fumes of his ideas enticed Isa into following Lea's lead, or something along those lines. Isa couldn't quite be bothered with keeping up with the gossip and theories about his friendship with Lea when he had a plan to put in motion.

Radiant Garden had recently been elected the City of Light. To commemorate the honorable title, King Ansem had decided to erect a majestic Christmas Tree on the town square right outside the the grounds of the Royal Palace. Having a Christmas Tree was already a tradition. The new tradition was in the lavish decorations: the specially made candy canes, the luxurious chocolates wrapped in golden foil, the detailed and colorful Christmas bulbs, and last, but not in any way least, the Christmas Tree Star that shone with the brightness of the sun.

Isa hadn't slept properly since that damned inauguration party for the Christmas Tree a week ago when the star was turned on. Three days in, and he had already started to plot the death of the Christmas Tree Star. His plan was almost complete. All that was left to do was to convince his partner in crime that this was something that needed to be done.

It was nearing midnight when Isa, with much effort, pulled himself up onto the side of the roof closest to Lea's bedroom. He was a hundred percent convinced that it was the dark circles around his eyes that were weighing him down. His face, or head for that matter, had never felt as heavy as it had in the past few days.

He reached for Lea's bedroom window and wiggled his fingers between the small crack between the window and the window frame to push it open widely and climb into Lea's bedroom. It was usually a fairly easy thing to do, but not tonight. Isa was caught in a web of at least three covers hanging over the window and fell into the room with a muffled curse as he tried to fight off the covers instead of falling asleep.

"Isa?" Lea sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes through the two eye masks he was wearing.

"Lea, get up, we're going to destroy that star," Isa said from the floor where he lay all wrapped up in the covers.

"What for? It's pretty."

"The greater good. To save Christmas. To not blind Santa." Isa looked at Lea to see if his expression changed into something that would indicate cooperation, but Lea looked doubtful. "You'll get a five second kiss and bragging privileges."

"Ten."

"Deal."

"Alright, let's go. We have a star to destroy." Lea jumped out of bed and tossed his eye masks aside.

Isa was going to comment on Lea's bile yellow night shirt, but in his sleepy mind he concluded that in the strong light of the star, Lea would essentially be invisible in that shirt. According to the guards, Lea was one strike away from being banished into another dimension. It was clearly an exaggeration, Isa thought, but one couldn't be too cautious when it came to punishments.

Isa had grown fond of Lea over the years, and putting his plans in motion would be hard without his other half in the same dimension.

**-o-**

It took a whole of fifteen minutes and an almost break-in to Lea's neighbor's shed for the two to conclude that Isa's idea of stealing ladders and tape them together to reach the star needed a few tweaks before they could get the show on the road.

"Let's see," Isa said thoughtfully. He had an arm around Lea's shoulders and drummed his fingers as he tried to think of a better idea. His fingers brushed against the fluffy end of Lea's Santa hat.

"It's cold," Lea said in his defense when he felt Isa side-eye him from behind the 3D-glasses he had found in Lea's room and put on before they left.

"Anyway," Isa continued as he turned his attention to the current bane of his existence. "We're just gonna have to break into Merlin's house again."

"We promised we wouldn't."

"Desperate times, Lea. We just need to borrow a couple of spells."

"Or," Lea began and quickly put his arms around Isa to stop him from going anywhere. "We could use my brother's skylift."

"What's a skylift?"

"It's one of those basket machines that elevate with the push of a button - the one's that are on the construction site. My brother said that he'd let us go for a ride, might as well do it now."

"I concur. Go and get the keys."

A scare in the shape of a coat hanging in the hallway that looked like an angry brother and twenty minutes later, Isa and Lea had made it to the construction site that was a stone's throw away from the castle grounds and the town square. The skylift was bright orange and bigger up close than Lea and Isa had imagined it to be during the days they had plotted stealing one of these to get into the castle.

They were going to use it for a different purpose now. All the had to do was to figure out how to make it work.

"We're gonna have to paint this in a darker color," Lea said while Isa climbed into the lift.

"We don't have time for that kind of stealth. Grab a toolkit and climb in."

"Why a toolkit?"

"Because we're both lousy at throwing things at a target. We need as many shots as we can get. Grab that wrench too."

"I'm not lousy. I'm in the baseball league."

"Yeah, I've seen you play from where you sit on the bench." Isa rolled his eyes and reached for the keys in his pocket. "Hold on tight, we're ready for take-off."

The noise the skylift made was greater than its speed. Both Isa and Lea looked around worriedly for the guards, but there was no one to be seen. It wasn't long before they rounded the majestic Christmas Tree and away from the guards' sight.

"See," Isa said, crossing his arms. "This light has turned everyone into zombies. Imagine if there was an alien attack now. They'd easily take over because everyone is so sleep deprived that they can't be bothered to do anything. What we're about to do is nothing short of heroic."

"Totally," Lea agreed, sounding as if he was talking through a swollen tongue.

Isa turned around to face Lea just in time to see him pull a handful of chocolates from the branches nearby.

"Before you say anything," Lea began and wiped the side of his mouth, "eat one. They taste heavenly. I'm bringing some for my mom." Lea turned back to the tree and grabbed another handful and stuffed his pockets.

"Can we focus?" Isa sighed and looked down on the instrument panel. The symbols on the buttons weren't difficult to understand. They were, after all, made with construction workers in mind, Isa thought as he pushed the button that moved the lift upward.

"Do you have any idea of how expensive those chocolates are, Lea?" Isa asked with another eye-roll when he heard Lea unwrap another one.

"Not as expensive as the star, I bet." Lea grinned at Isa when Isa looked back at him.

"You think it's expensive? Didn't we get this as a trophy for being the City of Light?"

"Naaah, I'm pretty sure the king shelled out a million munny for that star."

Isa smirked. There was no way Lea was going to get him to chicken out.

"What a waste," Isa said with a shrug.

"Not really." Lea got up to stand next to Isa to reveal the real reason behind his grin. "We'll be remembered as the heroes that took back the night." Lea threw his arm around Isa's shoulder and brought him in close. He lowered his voice and stared off into the distance, caught in the movie he saw in his head. "A bright, bright star, that could be seen from afar, frightened and blinded our Sandman from town, and now everyone walks around with a frown -" Lea passionately narrated their future intro for what Isa assumed was their TV-show or movie.

"Lea, _focus_!"

"I am focused."

"Hand me the wrench."

"I wanna throw the wrench. I play baseball, I know how to throw it and actually hit the star."

"Fine. Give me the hammer."

"Maybe we should be wearing a disguise next time. And come up with a catchy name for ourselves. Something that'll fit on a T-shirt - hey, wait! Let me show you how to throw. It's an artform."

Lea stopped Isa from throwing the hammer at the star from where they stood, almost six feet below it.

"We have to stand back a little. Here's fine. Spread your legs a little to stand firm. Make sure you're weight is on the outside of your feet, like this. Right. Take a deep-"

Lea didn't get any further. The sound of the hammer crashing against the star made them both flinch and take cover from any possible glass shards raining down. The star swayed briefly and flickered as there were small implosions inside of it.

"We're gonna cause half of Radiant Garden a seizure," Isa said as he saw their shadows come and go on the tiled floor. "Throw the wrench when it sways to the other side," Isa said to Lea.

Said and done. Lea threw the wrench at the right time. The star didn't get to sway back onto place. Its weight made the very upper part of the trunk break with quite a treacherous sound. The star fell onto the ground and it was like every mirror in Radiant Garden had broken at the same time; both in sound and in mess.

It didn't take long before they could hear the guards' frightening yells come from the castle grounds. Lea grabbed one last handful of chocolates and turned to Isa with slight panic in his eyes.

"To the nearest roof!"

Isa steered the skylift toward the buildings nearby. It felt like they could've fled faster if they had crawled across the town square compared to the skylift's speed. The yells from the guards sounded so close that they could've been standing right there in the lift with them.

As soon as the lift hit against the nearest building, Lea grabbed Isa's hand and led him onto the roof. They ran as fast as they could, hoping that the roof tiles underneath their feet wouldn't slip and send them to either an early grave or to the hospital with fractured everything.

By the time the guards had gotten onto the roof, too, Isa and Lea had managed to climb down to firm ground. There was no way they'd stop running yet.

The ruckus had awaken the villagers and they could see lights being lit everywhere where curious villagers were readying themselves to find out what was going on, or to celebrate the death of the Christmas Tree Star. Isa was betting on the latter.

They didn't stop until they were back in Lea's yard, climbing up the shed to get back into Lea's room. They only managed to get up on the roof though. They sat down, catching their breaths as they saw emergency lights around the castle.

"Look, isn't that one of Merlin's spells?" Lea pointed at the small flying saucers that searched the city with a special light for anything suspicious. It was a little late to use it now that the streets were overflowing with villagers walking toward the scene of the crime.

"Here. Your brother's keys." Isa handed Lea the keys with a deep breath. "Mission accomplished. We did a good deed today."

"I had forgot what a buttload of stars there are up there." Lea leaned back on his hands and looked up.

"The star was up for a week."

"Yeah, but, it's like catching a cold, you know? Two days in and you've forgotten what it's like to not have a cold." Lea glanced over at Isa with a sparkle in his eye. "Isa, take off the glasses."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I haven't slept in days. I look like Uncle Fester."

Lea laughed and reached for the glasses himself. He took them off and tilted his head to get a better look, and he smiled.

"It doesn't look that bad."

"Liar," Isa said and looked down onto his hands with a faint blush.

"You want chocolate? I took a whole bunch."

Before Lea could dig his hands into his pockets, Isa grabbed him by the front of his bile yellow shirt and pulled him in for a soft and brief kiss.

"Or...this," Lea said with slight gulp. "This is fine, too."

"You know what we could call ourselves? The Skylifters. We can shorten it to S and L, make a design out of it and print it on T-shirts."

"You're so mean when you tease me like this." Lea leaned his forehead against Isa's and shivered slightly.

"We'll make a fortune."

"You owe me ten more seconds."

"We'll be regular high schoolers during the day, and Skylifters during the night."

"That's it, I'm telling my gran to print the shirts for us."

"In bile yellow?" Isa laughed.

"You laugh now, but know that she brought a nightshirt for you too, and I'm sure there's even a knitted sweater for you under our Christmas Tree, and she's gonna be here all of winter break expecting to see us in her presents."

"Lea, we need a plan," Isa said seriously.

"We'll talk business after I get my reward, Skylifter."


End file.
